What radio did was look for ways to eliminate dependencies on "the talent." And what they should have done is get more talent and put the incentives on interactions.
Radio was super compelling. Audio only material still is. Being able to listen while doing other stuff, like driving, software, all sorts of partial attention consuming tasks makes for an audio only market that is consistent and demanding.
And it was, and still is going nowhere!
Radio got this horribly wrong, and they got it wrong because they did not understand what compelling means and why that matters.[0]
And they got it wrong because of raw greed and a failure to respect their listeners, who form the heart of what was otherwise a government protected magic money machine![1]
So, what they did was research the tunes, sort them into buckets and blast those out as cheaply as they could, and at the same time water down the talent by having them record all sorts of stuff for many cities thinking recordings are almost as good as real people are.
And what that did was nationalize radio making it bland and soul less. And then rise of the Internet and the phones being portable radios, among many other things, completely dominated.
Radio divides right along Internet / pre Internet lines. Older people mostly, but not completely, like radio and can relate to it well enough to listen. Maybe during work, or a drive.
And there is talk radio. When it is done right, talk radio is very compelling! The divide here is mostly old vs. young, but also authoritarian vs more egalitarian. Talk radio plays extremely well to authoritarians! It can play well to others, but the industry is establishment aligned and that is hard to shake due to very large numbers of stations being owned by single entities.
It is a mess nowadays. But it could have been much better.
Podcasts have replaced this stuff for many, and there are plenty of tou tube people doing the work radio used to do.
Having video is nice, but totally optional.
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[0] Thought experiment:
Say you get two streams. Stations. One is great quality, but dull. The other is of dubious quality, but super compelling!
Which one do you listen to? Why?
Which one do you believe most others listen to and why?
What do you feel explains your answer being different?
[1] Fact is we are super good at detecting other minds through communications. It can be simple or complicated, and it does not matter much at all. We connect, identify and start to bond with and understand this other person well. This is daily relevance and once it is established, people crave it and will put up with a lot to keep their daily driver type person happy, healthy and able to entertain and inform us every day.
